i woke up this morning in a funk. aside from hormones, i'm not sure what to attribute it to. just yesterday, i was spending an extra 5 hours at school, working but feeling blessed until my spirits took a dive for depression-ville late last night.
i found myself trolling the web for stories of haiti, updates on friends there and elsewhere that i met during my time living in St. Marc. i found myself in tears at the words of others; words that resonated in my heart in ways that only words spoken by someone who gets it can.
i read a blog of a family that recently returned stateside after serving in haiti since 2006 (you can read (and cry) about them here in the original post). the wife, tara, makes the statement that home is everywhere, and nowhere. i totally feel that. since being back from haiti, i have had a sense of tension with being here. i've been back in nashville longer than i was even gone, and that tension is still unresolved. nashville is my home. i'm living in a nice house, working in a fabulous school, getting paid for using my degree, cooking in an equipped kitchen, using modern amenities like a/c, heat, washer/dryer and a dishwasher, driving my air-conditioned car 20 miles to work each day, and not covered in sweat when i wake up in the middle of the night. but something doesn't feel right. and that feeling won't dissipate.
she gets that. and eugene cho did too. en route to haiti while leaving his wife and kids in seattle, he wrote a blog post explaining the tension. cho says: "There’s this constant tension because I want it to feel right. I want them to feel right. I want to feel right…I want to be right. And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe there’s something about following Christ that just doesn’t feel right. Or rather, how did we get duped into thinking that taking up the Cross felt right? Be encouraged my friends. If things aren’t “right with you,” maybe you’re in a good place…"
where did we get the notion that things were supposed to feel right? and when did we decide that being in a place where things didn't feel right was a bad place to be?
it is that tension that challenges us to live differently. to be different. as Tara says, "I think ... that living in this tension is part of what it feels like to always long for something more, something like Heaven."
i'll admit, the most difficult part for me in being back has been my interactions with friends. i am no longer the person i was, and it is hard for me to accept that they have not shared in those experiences with me. because of that, i get frustrated easily, and isolate myself or remove myself from conversation when it becomes sarcastic, offensive, or throws someone under the same bus they just crawled out from. in no way do i intend to sound holier-than-thou, and that is another stitch of tension i experience. my heart and mind have been radically broken and transformed, taught to seek to help and not harm, that i really struggle with just being "normal".
i'm left longing for more, longing for that piece of heaven. and cho is right. it won't "feel right." not until we are reunited with Christ as the full expression of who He created us to be in His image. in the meantime, it is up to us to flourish as we live out the lives we were created to live and the callings we are to fill here on earth. our calling may not be to a land or a people or even a career. but it is most certainly a calling to live for Christ, to become more like Him, and to serve and love one another.
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